Izgad is Aramaic for messenger or runner. We live in world caught between secularism and religious fundamentalism. I am taking up my post, alongside many wiser souls, as a low ranking messenger boy in the fight to establish a third path. Along the way I will be recommending a steady flow of good science fiction and fantasy in order to keep things entertaining.
Welcome Aboard and Enjoy the Ride!

Friday, February 11, 2011

If You Hired a Historian as Your Therapist

As I argued in the previous post, historians have a far superior method of analyzing human motivation than psychoanalysts do. The obvious conclusion from this is that historians should step in and offer themselves as professional psychologists. There are millions of people out there not achieving their personal goals in life, whether in business, love or in just being happy. Many of these people are at present spending thousands of dollars lying on the couches of psychoanalytic therapists, as they try to pierce the veil of their own subconscious to explain their failings. Considering the poor job market for historians, I am sure many of my fellow graduate students would jump at the chance to apply their skills in dealing with historical figures to helping real live present day people with their problems. Of course the psychiatric board would object, demand that we receive licenses from them and refuse to give them to us, but that is just a matter of them being a special interest group.

So what might it be like to have a historian as one's personal therapist? The goals of such therapy would be different from traditional psychoanalysis. For our historian therapist, the purpose in treating his patient would be to rationally examine their goals in life, the actions they have taken to achieve them, the rational reasons why such actions might have failed and how better to rationally pursue their goals in the future. Since we are applying the historical method, there would be a radical de-emphasis on talking to the patient. As historians we value written documents over personal memory. So, after an initial consultation with the patient to discuss their specific goals in therapy, the patient would turn over all relevant documents such as letters, e-mails and text messages (living in the twenty-first century is going to be a big help with this) over to the historian therapist for study. Our historian therapist would then proceed by himself to analyze these documents to get a sense of the patient and their motivation, while keeping in contact with the patient to receive biographic info to help place everything in its right context. Once our historian therapist is satisfied with the information he has he can bring in the patient for the actual therapy. Proceeding on the assumption that the patient has acted from consistent rational motivations, our historian therapist will discuss the logical possibilities over with his patient. The starting point is going to be the patent's motives as he understands them, considering that he is the one with the best knowledge of his own mind. Our historian therapist will challenge his patient by pointing out contradictions between what the patient claims and his actions as they appear from the documentary evidence and suggest other possible motives more consistent with the evidence at hand.

It is here that our historian therapist is likely to get into trouble. Therapists, as employees of their own patients, are dependent upon the good will of their patients and therefore need to create "safe" environments and offer flattering explanations that will appeal to the patient so that the patient will continue to employ them. This is one more reason why this whole psychoanalytic field is invalid as a means of gaining actual knowledge. Historians usually have the advantage of dealing with dead people and therefore we have the luxury to be as critical as we wish. Like psychoanalysts, we do not judge our subjects, but to attack and demonstrate that the subject was not as virtuous as they claimed is a basic part of the historian's task. You identify your source's agenda and ignore anything it tells you that supports this agenda; on the flip side you accept as absolute truth anything that goes against the agenda. This creates a relationship between historians and their sources more akin to that of police interrogating a subject than a therapist with a patient.

Sigmund Freud argued that, since there is much in psychoanalysis that a patient would be loathe to accept, it is necessary to create a process in which the patient comes to the proper conclusions on their own and not as the opinion of the therapist. Our historian therapist might be able to do something similar. He can teach the patient about the historical method and invite him to apply it to the events of his own life through the analysis of documents that he wrote. If nothing else, a commitment to reason and using it as a tool of self analysis should do wonders for any patient's mental well being.

4 comments:

" Therapists, as employees of their own patients, are dependent upon the good will of their patients and therefore need to create "safe" environments and offer flattering explanations that will appeal to the patient so that the patient will continue to employ them. "

-You are confusing two completely different professions: that of a psychotherapist and that of a psychoanalyst. As they say, for your money a therapist will tell you what you want to hear, while an analyst will tell you what you don't want to hear. I think this carelessness with terminology is what's ultimately confusing you.

A reference to a "flattering psychoanalyst" is just really funny to anybody who has been in psychoanalysis. I want to eviscerate mine after each session because of the "flattering" things he says. :-)

As long as a psychoanalyst is employed by the patient he cannot be an objective judge of facts, but will always be trapped into saying what will most likely keep himself employed. In practice I am sure there are many in the field who bravely try to offer much needed tough love to their patients. Even that cannot compare to the attack and discredit mindset that historians take for granted. Psychoanalysts, regardless of whether they engage in actual flattery, need their patients to feel comfortable so that they will open up. Our historian therapist armed with the patient’s documents will have no need for that. When critically analyzed, the documents will say everything our historian therapist needs to know. Talking to the patient would just be a mere formality to confirm what the historian already knows to be true and to convey this truth to the patient.

There was this huge debacle in my field when a critic wrote a lengthy study analyzing a literary character's dreams in a quasi-psychoanalytic way. As (his) bad luck may have it, an actual psychoanalyst read the article and wrote a very detailed analysis of how any attempt to psychoanalyze a character always turns into a complete joke.

Since then, nobody dares to psychoanalyze literary characters in my field. Whenever a grad student even tries, this story is immediately brought to their attention as a cautionary tale. :-)

About Me

I work as a tutor, specializing in the humanities (the sorts of things I discuss here on this blog). If you live in the Los Angeles area and you have kids that can use some enrichment or help not provided by their school, feel free to contact me. I make house calls and my rates are low. Recommendations from previous and current clients can be provided.
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